


Still Us

by GoldStarGrl



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Introspection, Season 1 Finale Spoilers, surviviors guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 09:22:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1643645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma Simmons is very smart. But she's not a miracle worker.</p><p>Post The Beginning of The End</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Us

Jemma Simmons was very smart.

She held PHDs in two different subjects, tested with an IQ of almost 200, and had memorized the periodic tables when she was six. 

She knew what happened to someone when their brain was deprived of oxygen for over a minute.

_Prolonged hypoxia induces neuronal cell death via apoptosis, resulting in a hypoxic brain injury._

_Brain dead_ , was the word her professors used to describe it. _The lights are on but there's nobody home._

It had made sense to her then, scribbled down in her notebook and memorized that night. Just a definition, a factoid, nothing more.

But she couldn't make that phrase, those words, reconcile with the broken boy who lay still and cold in front of her.

Fitz couldn't be gone. He just couldn't. His beautiful mind was one of the best things about him; The universe couldn't be so cold, so uncaring that it would take it away from him. From them. From her.

His vitals beeped dully on the screen next to his hospital bed, a bland rhythm that kept her company at this hour, so late it was morning.

Her eyes canvassed his face for the umpteenth time, searching, hoping for some kind of movement. Proof that Leo Fitz was going to wake up and still _be_ Leo Fitz.

She wasn't an idealist. That had always been his department. She was a doctor, and she knew how someone's chances of waking unchanged, if it all, decreased the longer they lay in a coma.

Dark images of Fitz unable to walk, talk, lift his head filled her mind. Slack jaws and slurred gibberish and unfocused eyes that couldn't recognize Jemma Simmons.

Hopelessness surged through her as she pushed those thoughts away. She dabbed his forehead with her sleeve, despite their being no sweat on his cool, motionless face.

"I'm going to be here when you wake up, Fitz." She said shortly, trying in vain to stay calm and detached, like May was in battle or like Fitz was from this awful world that was trying to take him. "I will always be right here, no matter what happens. Because you're still my Fitz." She pressed her trembling lips together and looked skyward, silently pleading for the strength to keep speaking. 

"We're still us."

Jemma Simmons was very smart.

But even she couldn't figure out if she was trying to convince him, or herself.


End file.
